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What Do You Do When Your Supplies Run Out?

What Do You Do When Your Supplies Run Out?

The small percentage of the population that keeps extra supplies on hand in the event of a disaster have taken the necessary steps to insure their family will not suffer as most others will following an event. This is the act of intelligent people that realize we live in a dangerous world with many unknowns. 

It does not matter if you are prepared for two weeks, two months or two years of societal disruptions. At some point, if the event goes on long enough, you will eventually come to the end of your supplies. When that happens, what will you do? 

Having a two year store of supplies is exceptional but as we have seen, some disasters can last far beyond that. The food scarcity we see in places like Venezuela have taken years to unfold and some past wars have raged on for more than a few years. When that happens even your best efforts may fall short and leave you in want. 

Those that store a certain amount of supplies for a set period of time need to think beyond that period of time and imagine what they will do when the disaster lasts longer than they had planned on. 

When you plan for an event, you need to think of the worst possible scenario and have a plan to handle it. A worst possible case may entail more supplies than you have the ability to buy or store but you should consider what your actions will be if you find yourself in that situation. Thinking about it now while you have the time to find solutions and determine a course of action will help you to stay calm and prevent you from making mistakes that might harm you later.

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Why Are American Communities Dying?

Why Are American Communities Dying?

Most Americans who have been around for a while know life is nothing like it used to be. When someone wanted a job one was found with a little bit of searching. Today jobs are difficult to find, especially in small communities. 

When I was growing up in the 70’s, there were several car dealers in my community. There were three tractor dealers and too many mom and pop stores to count. Today there are two used car dealers and the nearest tractor dealer is twenty miles away. So how is it that we now have more people, but fewer businesses to employ them?

A nations wealth is derived from having a product to sell. That wealth needs to circulate in towns and cities to compound the wealth effect and create jobs and businesses. When wealth is not created or it is siphoned off to other places, the wealth effect can not happen, and in many cases goes into reverse. A community needs a certain amount of service related jobs to function but it also needs some type of production jobs to bring in money from the outside. This can be mining , agriculture or manufacturing type jobs, but they must exist to insure a healthy economy.

America has two major problems today. A large amount of our production is done outside the country eliminating production jobs in local communities and many of the small local businesses that kept wealth within communities have been supplanted by large corporations that siphon wealth out of communities and send it to wall street. 

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Its Time For A New Agriculture Policy

Its Time For A New Agriculture Policy

Once again farmers across America are facing ruin. They are encouraged to grow crops at high cost and little profit and the only people that actually make any money are the bankers, seed companies and the fertilizer companies. Farmers are a pawn in global economics that allow countries to control others by threat of famine. 

Farmers live and die at the whim of trade deals. They are the shock absorber for men in suits that care only about numbers. As go the farmers, so goes the nation. A nation cannot survive without its farmers if it wishes to remain a developed nation. 

A great deal of pomp is made every time a farm bill is passed as bureaucrats hail the great thing they have done for farmers. They hand out billions in subsidies every year but the vast majority of that money is welfare for large corporate farming interests. It goes to men who work in office buildings. 

The government is in a position to actually help the farmers and the population in general if it really wanted to. When farmers have sufficient excess production that they cannot sell into the market for whatever reason, the government has the ability to buy this excess and store it as a strategic food reserve for the nation. 

This grain can be stored in facilities near major cities to guarantee supplies in the event of disaster and be rotated out every few years to keep it fresh. This can help keep the market stable and provide a guaranteed market for the crops. It will also give the government bargaining power in trade deals because they will hold the excess grain reserves in the country. 

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How Individuals Can Reset The Financial System

How Individuals Can Reset The Financial System

We have often heard the predictions that the currency system will be reset at some point when the bankers can no longer keep the current ponzi scheme going. The current scheme involves the ability of the bankers to convince the population that pieces of paper rolling off a machine or digits created on a computer screen are real wealth. The education system has been successful in that regard. 

Very few people actually understand what real wealth is or anything about economics. They have been led to believe that these things are too complicated for them to understand and it should be left to the experts. These same experts get richer as everyone else gets poorer. That is the way they have rigged the system. 

Resetting the system and taking these con artists out of the loop can be as easy as refusing to accept paper or electronic money and only accepting gold and silver for payments. This sounds crazy on the surface but it is not impossible to do and it must be done before they can transition completely into electronic payment systems. Once they transition into electronic payments they will be able to control everything you do and buy. 

If they do not want you to own guns or ammo they can simply ban all of these types of transactions. If they do not want you to buy gold or silver they can ban those transactions. If they do not want you to stockpile food they can limit how much you buy from week to week. With no way to buy outside of the electronic system, you will be totally under their control even more than you are now. 

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How Do You Beat The Bankers At Their Own Game?

How Do You Beat The Bankers At Their Own Game?

Those that have been following events for several years know they are under attack by an enemy that has no face and means to do them great harm. Nothing less than their sovereignty and freedom is at stake. Absolute control over people and resources is the ultimate goal.

People need to understand that the bankers need to collapse everything and leave the population in want of resources and supplies. Just like after a natural disaster when the government shows up to provide help to those that have lost everything, the bankers want to show up after the population has lost everything in a collapse, to be their savior and gain control of everyone by offering resources in exchange for compliance.

There are several actions you can take to prevent these people from gaining control over your life. 

You must be able to feed yourself-

You must have a home to live in that you own free and clear-

You need to be your own energy company-

You need to be your own bank-

You need to be able to defend what you have-

You need to have skills to operate your own business-

You need to promote a community based economy-

To put it simply, you need to get out of their game and start your own. Remember, the house always wins.

The bankers can only win the game if people are dependent on the elite for everyday necessities. The bankers have created a society of dependent people that they can exploit. They can only continue to exploit people as long as they are dependent on the bankers for the things they need. Once this dependence is broken the bankers lose much of their control on society. This dependence is broken by people who can provide their own necessities. 

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Energy Is The Key To Everything

Energy Is The Key To Everything

The West Line Is Telling Us Where We Are Headed

The West Line Is Telling Us Where We Are Headed

Seven Acres and Independence

Seven Acres and Independence

 

Things Work Until They Don’t

Things Work Until They Don’t

Surviving The Next Great Depression

Surviving The Next Great Depression

Would Rural Areas Be Safer In A SHTF Situation?

Would Rural Areas Be Safer In A SHTF Situation?

In a situation where national infrastructure and life sustaining resources are suddenly cut off , population density will have a lot to do with how well you get by in the days following the crisis. When it happens, what you have on hand will likely be all you have to work with for an extended time. Those that lack supplies will seek out and take what they need in an increasingly hostile manner as time goes on. This is why being in a large city will likely be hazardous to your well being.

Very few will argue that being in a rural area when something catastrophic happens will greatly increase your chances of survival. A lower population density and more available natural resources to help you get by will make long term survival much easier. This is why so many people advocate heading for a rural area when something happens. The problem is unless you are already established in a rural area, survival will not necessarily be easier.

Leaving the city when supplies and infrastructure are shut down would work only up to a point. Rural areas are like anywhere else. They have infrastructure designed to service a certain number of people that normally live there. The housing, restaurants, roadways, water systems and grocery stores will only handle a small excess of people even in the best of times. When the city dwellers suddenly evacuate to the rural areas in mass, they will simply be taking many of their big city problems with them. They will likely find no housing, food supplies or other infrastructure they need to live.

Because of this many small towns will likely close their roads at some point and prevent entry to anyone who does not live there. They will suddenly realize their already finite resources will not be enough for themselves much less thousands of new people.

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Your Disaster Response Is Limited By Your Imagination

Your Disaster Response Is Limited By Your Imagination

I touched on this in a previous article. You need to imagine the many forms a disaster will take and have a plan to cope with the changing situation.

I am sure there were many people in the areas affected by the recent hurricanes that had prepared for such an occurrence only to find they were still lacking in some form. It is good to have several months of supplies on hand to deal with a crisis but how many of these people had to evacuate due to flood waters and leave the bulk of these supplies behind? I often wonder how many ended up in evacuation sites anyway and how many had a plan and were able to load up their supplies and get to an alternate safe location.

It is difficult to know how any disaster will play out but your response to it is only limited to how much imagination you put into planning for it. I’m often accused of having crazy ideas but those ideas provide me with a data base to draw on in times of crisis. It is often hard to think straight when disaster approaches and time is short and it is in those moments that you must rely on what you already know.

For instance, following the unprecedented flooding in the gulf states I wondered what I would do if I suddenly found my home surrounded by rising flood waters. I live on a small hill which is one of the highest places in the area. Any flooding would cut off vehicle evacuation long before water reached the house. I concluded my only options would be to sink or float.

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You Are Either A Prepper Or A Future Victim

You Are Either A Prepper Or A Future Victim

The recent disasters around the world have shown most people are ill prepared for sudden disruptions to normal life. Just as there was a lack of imagination that allowed 9/11 to happen, the population suffers from a lack of imagination that allows them to suffer from sudden occurrences. Survival favors the prepared mind.

Simply having supplies piled up in preparation for some occurrence is not enough to insure your survival. There are several other things you must keep in mind and balance out among your preparations.

You must imagine the potential catastrophic possibilities
You must prepare yourself mentally to deal with whatever happens
You must have knowledge of how best to employ your resources
You need to use your imagination to think outside the box
You must be able to improvise, adapt and overcome obstacles
You must have a flexible plan to guide you

Many people have spewed hateful rhetoric at preppers over the years and today some are finding themselves in dire circumstances as infrastructure and supplies are cut off for an indefinite period of time. Those unprepared individuals have few options and now rely on the actions of others to insure their survival.

As many in the Caribbean can now attest to, having to wait for help to come from hundreds or even thousands of miles away is slow and stressful to those who wait. They do not know when help will arrive and what resources will be available when they arrive. It could take years for many locations to return to some type of normalcy and this is at a time when help is available and forthcoming. What happens when that help is not available following an event?

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How Will You Cope With A Lower Standard of Living?

How Will You Cope With A Lower Standard of Living?

The forces are mounting that will eventually overwhelm most Americans and send their standard of living to unknown depths. Americans that have only known the post WWII prosperity are ill equipped and educated to deal with depression level living. Easy credit and instant gratification have created a nation of whining, self absorbed, entitlement minded people with no moral or mental toughness.

Doug Casey believes we are headed for what he calls a super depression created by the ending of a debt super cycle. The bigger the debt cycle the bigger the depression that follows. That’s how reality works and most people are not prepared for reality.

When this depression, which has already started, gets momentum, it will overwhelm the plans of a society that is expecting to get things like social security, pensions and payouts from retirement plans they have paid into for many years. All of those things will disappear almost overnight and leave society gasping and stupefied over what to do. Their reactions will be to yell and scream and try to identify who to blame but the only person they should blame is the one in the mirror.

Many very smart people have raised the alarm and done their best to warn the sleeping public, but those slumbering masses have ignored the warnings and hit the snooze button one more time. The masses do not understand economics, do not want to understand economics and they will pay dearly for that ignorance in the coming days.

When the real unemployment rate becomes common knowledge as it increases substantially, people will be left to survive on what resources they have saved up outside the banking system that cannot be stolen by the politicians and bankers. That is a key point here. The assets you have outside the system that cannot be stolen from you with a few key strokes on some computer.

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Economic Collapse Logistics For The Government

Economic Collapse Logistics For The Government

When a national currency collapses, the government goes into survival mode and does what is necessary to insure its continued existence. The state power becomes all important and citizens become expendable. The state exists for it’s own fulfillment.

When the monetary system collapses along with the banks, the government will still need a way to pay government employees to insure they continue enforcing the governments will. If all government employees suddenly decided to stay home the few officials that remained at their desk would be ordering 300 million people around with no way to enforce their orders. To maintain control of the population it is necessary for government minions to continue doing their job of enforcement.

This means the government would need the means to continue fulfilling the needs of government employees to insure their compliance and obedience. As long as people get the things they need to survive day to day they will continue to do as ordered to continue that supply.

The government would need to insure that a payment system and banking system would remain functioning after a collapse. The banking system may not look like the current one but something would have to take it’s place. Once the currency has failed it would be necessary for the government to issue a new currency. It may not be accepted by the majority but it is only necessary for it to be accepted by the government minions. This would allow the government to remain in control.

If the government employees know they will still be able to get food, clothing, gas and other items they need when normal citizens cannot, they will be inclined to stay on the job and do the governments bidding in order to maintain their standard of living. This would be a necessary control mechanism in the event of a collapse.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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